2006 Fpv Tornado F6 Ute - Cleanup & Resurrection

[turboknapp]

Pics of said milk crate guy or did not happen.

[PhilMeUp]

Pics of said milk crate guy or did not happen.

The dashcam that I ordered recently arrived a couple of days later.

Lesson from that night: start putting dashcams in every car I own (ie taxis).

[FiftyOne]

Mate, how many black cats have you been kicking lately? No luck at all. Great to see the blue machine all right & correct now though. Seeing the progress pictures plus the thing briefly in person, I am still ever impressed

[PhilMeUp]

Mate, how many black cats have you been kicking lately? No luck at all. Great to see the blue machine all right & correct now though. Seeing the progress pictures plus the thing briefly in person, I am still ever impressed

Problem that I haven't mentioned yet: Blue ute was driven home at an average of about 20km/h. Used my taxi knowledge to use every backroad possible between Maylands and Como.

It's in limp mode (ETC light is on). Diagnostic error is P0221, which has to do with the throttle position sensor.

Pulled the crossover manifold off last night, sprayed carby cleaner everywhere and had a general poke-around. Nup.

Left the battery off overnight. Started car this afternoon. Nup, still in limp mode.

Bugger.

Two FPV Tornados here. One that runs... usually... but is now out of rego (my attempts to get a dodgy inspection last week failed). The other one is licenced but wants to barely move.

Bugger.

I also haven't mentioned that the transmission in the green one might be stuffed as well. It was slipping like mad one night last week and eventually wouldn't move. After a while it got moving again, but is doing its own limp-home mode - stays in 3rd gear all the time. I'm hoping that a fluid flush sorts it out, but not enough battery voltage could also be the issue.

Soooooooooooooooo much time and effort on two cars... so little success.

[arronm]

Burn the lot and start again

[FiftyOne]

0_o

[bamk2f6tornado]

If you decide on the burn option you can always frame milk crate man...

[PhilMeUp]

Wednesday, 9th September, 2015

Today I had to go see someone about some taxi stuff. When I got there, I realised that he’s got a hoist out the back.

There was no hesitation. Forget the carpark out the front, the Tornado went straight into the workshop.

I figured I’d have a look under the car.

Then I remembered that the steering has been shuddering a bit. Time to loosen the steering rack bolts, put some grease on the studs and then tighten it up properly.

Up it goes...

I loosened off the two nuts that attach the steering rack to the k-frame crossmember.

I pulled the steering rack forward a bit.

I put a bunch of grease on the stud.

And then did the same on the other side.

To ensure that the nuts wouldn’t come loose in the future, I put some Loctite 222 on each stud.

I used my Draper 19494 Extra Long 18mm Metric Ratcheting Combination Spanner to tighten the nut on the driver’s side. This thing gives a lot of leverage.

The nut on the passenger side was also done up extra tight. Goody, no more steering shudder, hopefully.

[PhilMeUp]

Monday, 12th October, 2015

The Tornado has barely been running since I picked it up from the panel beater. It’s been stuck in limp-home mode and won’t rev.

Using FORScan and my Apple MacBook Pro laptop, I was getting numerous diagnostic trouble codes.

I kept resetting the codes, starting the engine and then checking for codes again.

One code that kept on appearing was P0121, which has to do with the Throttle Position Sensor (ie TPS).

Ok, time to replace the TPS.

Time to start poking around in the engine bay.

I removed the crossover manifold and airbox lid.

There are two screws holding the the TPS on to the side of the throttle body. These have a Torx T20 head (ie star shaped). Both of these had been stripped, and I had considerable trouble removing the two screws. The bottom one came out by pushing the socket into the top of the screw with a lot of force.

However, the top one wouldn’t rotate with the Torx socket. I ended up having to use a set of multi-grip pliers to rotate the screw bit by bit. This was extremely frustrating.

I was pretty pissed off at the time, but I just wanted my damn car to run again.

After lots of frustrating I got the top screw out and the TPS came away from the throttle body.

This is the head of the top screw. Someone before me has managed to completely stuff that one up.

I knew I had a spare TPS somewhere, so went looking through the various bunches of spare parts that I keep at home these days. Nup, not in either of those two plastic tubs.

I finally managed to remove the TPS (sitting on top of the black plastic coil cover). There had been a lot of time and frustration by now.

Then I remembered that I had a spare throttle body from an Egas LPG motor. There it is, on one of the bookcase shelves. I have parts all over the place here these days.

I checked the numbers on the side of the Egas throttle body TPS and confirmed that it was the same as the Tornado TPS. Goody. Finally, something going remotely right.

I also used the two screws from that throttle body, meaning that I could throw the ones with the stripped heads in the bin. I have no idea where I got that throttle body from, but it came in useful tonight.

With much anticipation, I started the engine. But, the same problem was there. It would start, rev out for a couple of seconds and then drop back to a very, very rough idle.

I was a tad miffed by now. Very, very, very upset. Lots of lovely language in the carport at 2:08am.

I put the MacBook Pro back to work and sure enough, the same error codes appeared. I kept resetting and re-checking them. Lots of times. Repeatedly.

Nup. Definitely not my best night.

A photo showing the throttle body from an Egas LPG Falcon, compared to the petrol-powered Tornado throttle body. They look almost identical, except for where the intake pipe attaches.

I recently re-torqued the exhaust manifold bolts, but the car is still making exhaust noise when it’s cold. I assumed that the manifold bolts had been loose for too long, and that the manifold gasket was stuffed.

Trying to salvage something from the night, I removed the exhaust manifold gasket from an old taxi motor. I’ve been meaning to throw that motor out for the last couple of months, but procrastination was useful, for once.

After removing the heat shields, I noticed that the four nuts that attach the turbo to the manifold were very loose.

You can see the gap between the nut and manifold.

I managed to get a ratchet spanner in to tighten the top two nuts.

But I couldn’t get to the bottom two nuts. Continuing with my consistent defeat tonight, I gave up in disgust, cursed some more and knocked off for the night.

[PhilMeUp]

Wednesday, 14th October, 2015

With the Tornado unable to go anywhere I figured I might as well wash it. That was about all I could do with it.

After spending a few hours this week trying to figure out why the engine wouldn’t run properly, I needed something positive about this car.

My focus on this car the whole time has been on mechanical issues and the interior (ie the driving experience). The exterior was always a low priority, but now that the paint chips had been sorted out the car did look a lot better.

After washing it, I was way too lazy to go over it with a chamois. Stuff it, I got out my petrol-powered Stihl blower to blow-dry the car. That actually worked fairly well.

The Tornado was starting to look good now. Damn shame that it doesn’t drive.

Huge amounts of frustration.

You’ll notice that there are currently six BF Falcons here. Yes, six. This place is a friggin’ car yard right now.

- The two Tornados (the replacement green one is in the background).

- The silver wagon on the lawn is my girlfriend’s ex-taxi. She spat it recently and bought a Camry.

- That blue BF sedan’s owner drives one of my taxis for dayshift. That taxi is a BFII sedan. Actually, that means that if both day drivers were to be here at the same time then there would be seven BF Falcons here at once.

- Across the road, the champaign-coloured wagon is an ex-taxi that belongs to the day driver for my taxi.

- And finally, my taxi, a BFIII wagon.

It’s like I’m running some sort of orphanage for BF Falcons here.

Except for the Camry Hybrid that I bought this week (obscured by the tree). Quite likely the most boring and soul-less thing on wheels that the human race has ever created.

The engine in my taxi died a while ago, just shy of 500,000km. It is extremely rare for a Barra motor to expire, so I’m curious to find out why that one suddenly started making very fatal bottom-end noises.

I know the basics of an engine, but not enough to pull this one apart and diagnose exactly what went wrong with it. Sooner or later I’ll ask around and find someone who will stand behind me as I dismantle it, and we’ll figure out what the fault was. I’ll do this in the back of the ute, and then I can dump the engine off at a rubbish tip by pushing it out of the back of the ute.

I’ll get the car polished in the near future. Once that’s done, I’ll put the replacement Tornado badges on the sideskirts.